“To Fathom Hell or Soar Angelic”: Theorizing a Psychedelic Politics
Theory & Event October 1, 2025 Matt Harvey
In an era of overlapping crises, people are pushed toward individual solutions for economic and political freedom while being offered digital illusions of community. Transhumanist proposals to escape mortality and impermanence have gained popularity, emerging from liberal views of political imagination as an expression of will. The author argues that recovering imagination as a faculty of political judgment requires transformative, transcendent experiences that disrupt ingrained habits of thinking. A psychedelic politics is proposed, beginning with individual self-work and leading to collective political action. By breaking from the familiar, alternative political worlds can be imagined and built, guided by lessons from transcendent experiences.